The varied peoples of Middle-earth at times found unity in their pursuits, and all too often experienced deep rifts. Engage in lively conversations as we banter about the differences between the Alliances, and recruit for our People as well. Remember, keep it friendly.

I do not have a dog at this time because I live in a rental and have no fenced yard but we would love to get a dog again someday.

My favorite dog was a cute little American Eskimo that I have back in the late 70s and early 80s. His name was Shadrach and he went by Boo Boo. We had to put him down because he went blind and started freaking out about things. Poor dog. We loved him so and he was my daughters best friend. It was a very sad day.

Now we would love to either get a Siberian Husky or a Malamute. My husband and I both love dogs but we have a cat right now and a very tiny house.

This is a great idea CR!!!!

Spring come quickly!!~*Sister of the Twilight*~~*Daughter of the Moon*~

I have had many doggies in my lifetime. But only one that I know will stay with me for the rest of my life. She was everything to me, my best friend during my horrid marriage years. She was the smartest dog I ever had and the most naturally obedient as well. I never had to tell her what to do, she just always did it, as if she could understand English or something.

Her AKC registered name was Augusta McCrae after Gus in the movie Lonesome Dove. But I called her Gussie and so many people thought she was a he because of the name.

I don't have a picture of her that I can post, meaning nothing online, but I will post a picture of the breed and she was true to the breed, looked just like this?

I could almost weep, just writing about her. I had her for 14 glorious years and she has been gone now over 12 years.

I have wanted to get another doggie, but I just haven't been able to. I can't imagine any other dog living up to her. But I am going to, when I move downstairs and I have already decided to get one of these:

Awww..those were so cute. I had a dog when I was younger, a mutt. It was said his mother was a thoroughbred show Cocker Spaniel, and his daddy was a traveling salesman. Looks like some kind of a setter. He was black, but with those sad Cocker eyes which could blackmail you out of anything.

But that nutty dog loved us to pieces, and had us rolling with all the crazy things he did. His name was Sam.

When I was five, we got an Airedale terrier puppy, a female named Honey. She was a really great dog: gentle but firm, and behaved rather like a shepherd than like a hunting dog, always taking care that her pack was fine. Sadly, when she was 11 years old, it was found out that she was suffering from terminal cancer, and had to be put to sleep.

The only photo I've got online at the moment is this, taken when she was not quite full grown yet. And yes, that's me aged 5.

Favorite dog of mine, would have to be Blackie, we got him in the early 90's when I was in elementary school, he was Lab, Irish wolf hound mix. Big black loveable dog that got along with everybody. When my sister had her first child he would not leave that bebe alone. we do not have a picture of Rhiannon for her first two years without blackie in it except what was taken at the hospital.

We also had rats as pets growing up and when we would clean the cages we would put the rat whose turn it was on blackies head and he would walk around the house with the rat walking up and down his back aand head. none of them ever fell off.

he lived a long life for a dog his size 14 years if I remember right. such a nanny-esk dog.

The dog Lan and I have now is a beagle/dachshund/jack russell mix. Or, in other words, a mutt. But a very loveable mutt. She loves everyone, and everyone is her friend. Unless you have four legs and get too close to her baby. Then she goes nuts.

When I was a kid we had a mixed spaniel that my father got from a co-worker who was moving somewhere he couldn't take her. She was middle-aged already and we were told she had been spayed--HAH! She mixed it up with the beagle down the street and had 7 puppies. She was something; the little kids in the neighborhood could rassle her and she'd take it like a rag doll, but let anyone come to the house on business and she turned into Cujo! She'd let the cat eat out of her bowl, right under her chin. She was quite elderly when we had to have her put down for stomach tumors.

When I was in high school, my father got a Sheltie, and he was the greatest dog. We raised Shelties for a few years, but this one, our first, was the king, that's all. My father trained him for obedience and he got his first degree. He'd play chase games with the cat; he'd herd us out of the house when we were taking too long to get going (he really wanted that ride in the car); he was full of pep right up till old age, and he was a real loving dog with us and all our guests.

We're apartment dwellers, and we sometimes go away for weekends, so under those conditions I simply don't want the responsibility of a dog. But if I did, I'd get another Sheltie, no question.

She is dang fast too, with amazing endurance just like her deep chest indicates she would have. We take her to the puppy park and watch her speed past all the other dogs except for one springer spaniel that was there once, and him she had more endurance than.

When I was a kid my dad got this puppy that he hauled everywhere with him. His mom was a chihuahua and his dad was a Maltese Terrier. He had bow legs in the front with long white hair shooting off of them hence his name "Chaps" He looked like he was wearing cowboy chaps.

I remember the first year when school got out for the summer dad decided to leave him home with us kids. Chaps sat at the top of the stairs and cried crocodile tears all day long. It didn't matter that us kids were home to play with him and we tried our hardest to get him to leave the steps and come play. So we ended up sitting with him all afternoon till dad came home. Poor dog. By the next day he was fine and he played with us for the remainder of his years. He never got to go with dad again like he did at first but he never showed that it bothered him.

In 1969 we moved to Sparks Nevada and Chaps got hit by a car. His pelvis was broke and we were crushed as well. Dad gave us the option to have Christmas that year or pay to get Chaps fixed up. We all unanimously voted to get Chaps operated on and home fast.

You know what? I think that Christmas we all got more stuff then ever before or ever after. Plus we got Chaps home in time for Christmas. I am not sure how old he was when my folks retired him out to my sisters ranch but one night shortly after moving him out there, he tried to follow then to town and got his by a semi. It was a sad day for us all. He was old I remember that.

Spring come quickly!!~*Sister of the Twilight*~~*Daughter of the Moon*~

I've never technically had a dog of my own, although I love them. It's pretty unfeasible to have a dog at the moment with the hours that we work. Someday perhaps.

A friend of mine and myself did foster a dog for a while. He was a Lab/lurcher etc mix and he was huge! His previous owners had to get rid of him sadly because their little boy became allergic to him (and lots of other things). It was heart-wrenching for them because they'd had Chandler (the dog) for longer than the wee boy and the dog and child were really attached to each other.

Chandler wasn't very well trained however, which seeing as he is such a large dog was pretty dangerous. I don't think he was socialised with other dogs that much, because whenever he saw one whilst we were out walking, he'd do anything to get to them - at one point I had him up on his hind legs! He had this huge deep bark too. He terrified some owners, although I knew that if I did actually let him go, he'd just dash over and say hi. There wasn't a vicious bone in his body. Eventually we managed to get him walking reasonably well on a leash and found him some new owners, who were a retired couple who had owned Gordon Setters before and so were used to larger dogs. We looked after him once when they were on holiday and he was obviously really happy with them.

Wilko's dad has a dog, a mongrel called Charlie who's a bit of a sweetie. She takes a while to warm up to you, but once she's your friend, that's it. She's not young any more, but still acts like a puppy occasionally!

This is me and Chandler.

He was extra long as well: his hips started where they should have ended.

I don't have a dog right now (apartment doesn't allow them) but I'm really, really hoping that when Tim and I get married and theoretically get a house (though, uh, job situation isn't looking terribly favorable ) we can get one. I have my kitty and I adore her but there's something about doggies, something big and slobbery and adorable...

I grew up with the biggest Golden Retriever ever. He was a sweetheart of epic proportions, and he thought he was a lapdog, which was a riot and really adorable at the same time. If you sat on the ground he'd IMMEDIATELY run over and sit in your lap. So cute. He unfortunately got spleen cancer and had to be put down a couple of years ago. My parents have since gotten a new dog, an American Eskimo, Quirk, who is INSANE and totally adorable. He's a little jumping bean -- he can jump as high as my head. (I'm 5'8"!) He's also really clever and really willful. I'm kind of glad that I don't have to deal with him everyday, but I do love to see him occasionally...

Very cute. And just wait until Vana sees him - she'll want to steal him away.

<-- Celebrating Science in the TVM!

Life is short; break the rules, forgive quickly; kiss slowly; love truly; laugh uncontrollably; and never regret anything that made you smile. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for the might-have-beens. - Arthur Ransome

Just because I have the vocabulary of a well-educated sailor doesn't mean I'm not a lady.

I guess I qualify as a dog-lover . So far I've had two dogs. First was a crazy mutt called Yannick, which ironically would have been my name if I had been a guy. We got him as a puppy from friends when I was four. His dad was an irish setter, his mom a mix of a bouvier and something else I forgot. The result was a rather dashing black setter with a very refined white 'tie' .

He was by all means a hunting dog and spent most of his time outside or with my dad on very long bike-rides. Nobody in the family could really keep up with them at that time so he was mainly my dad's dog. He did however have a rather strong pack-sense and I recall a mountain-hike where he spent the whole hike running back and forth between the members of our family, checking if everybody was alright and keeping up. By the time we arrived he had run three times the distance and was for the first and last time in his life truly tired. He never made it past the age of four however as he was run over by a car in front of my dad's eyes. Though he had been mainly my dad's dog the whole family was shattered, even my mom who hadn't been very keen on the idea of getting a dog at first. Me and my little brother spent many a night crying over it.

We soon realised that Yannick left a rather big hole in the family and a week later we were scouring the dog-shelters for a puppy to adopt. We finally settled on a daring little rascal, half labrador, half beauceron who had been named Youkie by the people of the shelter. We had a laugh when we heard that since before going on our search we had already decided to name the next dog Youk. So Youkie became Youk and soon he was trying to dig out all the bones that Yannick had forgotten about.

Where Yannick had been a rather obedient dog , Youk was a lot more willfull and had a habit of fighting with all the male dogs he met. We actually had to go to dog-training with him and I only dared to walk him when I was around fourteen and finally strong enough to keep him in check whenever he felt like acting on his hormones. Unlike Yannick, Youk wasn´t one of the smartest either and he once spend an afternoon under a tree, waiting for a bird who had already flown. He was however very playful, and an angel to children. Though many kids where at first scared of him because of his black fur most of them came around very quickly when they noticed they could do almost anything to him. My two-year old neighbour could tug at his tail and he wouldn't even twitch. He was also very protective of children, and he once jumped in a pool to fetch us because he thought we were drowning ( we were just swimming very enthusiastically really!).

I was much closer to Youk than Yannick especially after we moved to the Netherlands and my mom started working again. Youk was now the first to greet me when I came home from school and since we didn't we have such a big garden as we had in Belgium he spend most of his time indoors. He was my excuse to stop studying when I was fed up of Ancient Greek and was my favourite pillow whenever I decided that the carpet looked like a way more comfortable place to read my biology than a chair. He had been with us for nearly ten years when he finally started to show some sort of aging. We didn't really think much of it at first, ten years is starting to get old even for a mutt like him, but he aged a lot very fast the last year, and last spring we realised that Youk really wasn't doing well. We went to the veterinarian a couple of time but she couldn't find anything and then suddenly he got worse so fast that we were forced to put him down, so that he didn't have to suffer. He wasn't eating or drinking, had lost a lot of weight and was suffering from some sort of liver failure. I cried myself to sleep that night and sometimes when I go up the stairs I still expect to see him sleeping in my parent's bedroom, and when I see something black out of the corner of my eye I still turn around so that I can hug him.

The feminine version of Yannick does exist. I also know a girl named Yannicke. It is however originally a male Breton name derived from the french Jean. It is a rather popular in France and Belgium and I have offended quite a few guys when I was younger by laughing at them. For me Yannick was a dog's name. I also met a guy named Youk once though he's been the only one so far. His name was spelled differently too; Yook instead of Youk, and he was of asian descent.

I currently have three dogs. Two are German Shepherds. The third is a 4 1/2 month old Shiloh Shepherd. They are very close cousins of the German Shepherd, but have more mellow temperments and are quite a bit larger.

Ranger Aragorn is the oldest of the three. He'll be 9 next year. I rescued him from this:

The dog on the left is my female GSD, Star of Hope vom Bayou Land. She's the first dog I ever actually paid money for. I bought her as a prospective show/breeding dog. Alas, she didn't turn out as expected, and I had her spayed when her hip x-rays showed mild dysplasia in the one hip. She's got a wonderful temperment. She has more energy than Ranger, loves to play ball, and loves to cuddle.

Finally, there's Teena. Her mom belongs to a friend of mine, and I helped out with the whelping. She was by far the smallest pup in the litter, at only 8.5 oz. Her largest brother weighed a whopping 22 oz! (I'd say the average birth weight for a pup of this breed is about 16-17 oz.)

One thing I forgot to add is that Ranger is my hearing ear service dog. I trained him myself.

One night, he woke me up at 3 in the morining, and wouldn't let me go back to sleep. I couldn't figure out what the heck he wanted. Finally, the third time he poked me, I woke up enough to realize maybe he was trying to alert me to something I couldn't hear. I said, "What is it, Ranger?" He led me out into the dining room, and looked up at the smoke alarm. It was doing the low battery beep!

I took the battery out (there was another alarm in the room, the one I used to reinforce his training) and he finally let me go back to sleep!

The one part of his training I needed help with was alerting to the door, as he'd been an outdoor dog, and didn't know what a knock on the door meant. It took myself and a professional trainer 10 minutes to teach him that. It took about 2 minutes to teach him to alert to the kitchen timer.

The first thing I trained him for was the alarm clock. As my alarm also had a bed shaker, this was just a fun thing. I think I did 2 or 3 sessions with him, then didn't bother with any more.

One morning, he put his paws up on the bed, and nudged me awake. As the alarm hadn't gone off yet, I just ignored him. When he did it a second time, I decided I'd better pay attention, as he might be telling me he needed to go out.

When I rolled over, I found the bed shaker had quit on me, and he was trying to tell me the alarm had been going off for the last 15 minutes. Because I ignored him, I was nearly late for work!

Since I'd done so few training sessions with the alarm, I hadn't thought that was enough for him to alert to it reliably. Some trainers will tell you it takes 100 repetitions for the dog to be trained reliably to a task.

They don't know German Shepherds very well....

Last edited by Sunsilver on Mon Dec 21, 2009 9:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

Life is short; break the rules, forgive quickly; kiss slowly; love truly; laugh uncontrollably; and never regret anything that made you smile. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for the might-have-beens. - Arthur Ransome

Just because I have the vocabulary of a well-educated sailor doesn't mean I'm not a lady.